Garden: Be green and lose the lawn

We live in an apartment. It's a really great apartment but we don't have a yard. Someday, if we own a house, we'd like it to have a yard. Most people think that a yard means grass. Must. Have. A. Lawn. My question is WHY?

I remember my Dad doing battle with 'THE LAWN' for years. Mowing, edging, fertilizing, moss and weed control, watering...in short, a lot of maintenance. He said more than once if he had it to do over, he'd remove all the grass and create a simple landscape with rock, stone and low-care grasses.

The more I read about eco-friendly alternatives to the American tradition of the lush, green lawn, the more I am excited about those other possibilities and I believe that my Dad was ahead of his time with his landscape ideas.

Water-conserving gardens can be as colorful as any other. The front yard of Rick Cole, Ventura's city manager, is blooming proof. How pretty is that?!

Flagstone paths curve through a low-water front yard. A low berm of soil on either side of the walk adds interest, and weed cloth topped with permeable pea gravel allows excess water to soak into the earth rather than run off into the street.

Lawns need an inch of water each week during the growing season. Seattle-based landscape designer Stacie Crooks of Crooks Garden Design, knew she could create a beautiful tapestry of plants that would survive on half the water. She removed most of her lawn and planted a mix of perennials and shrubs.

Plant natives, and birds will follow. Designer and contractor Greg Rubin ― who specializes in California natives ― removed this lawn and created a curving path bordered by fragrant 'Bee's Bliss' salvia, wild lilacs, and an existing non-native purple tree mallow ― all are pretty, low-water plants.

Landscape designer Shirley Watts is on a mission to green up her gardens. Instead of packing them with foliage she found green solutions that benefit the environment by preserving resources and by recycling materials.

Style and practicality determined the design of this water-conserving garden in Clovis, California. In many areas of the West, water is a precious and limited commodity requiring careful management.

1. Do you have a lawn? Do you love it?

2. How do you deal with your lawn in a drought?

3. If you don’t have a lawn, what do you have instead?

Find more inspiring eco-yard photos, tips and ideas HERE.

Etsy Profile: Chiu Mei - Fancy That Cookies

Tell me a bit about yourself.

My name is Chiu Mei (like CHO - MAY). I am Taiwanese by birth but have lived in the USA for 18 years, currently in Raleigh, North Carolina. Y‘all would love it down here in the South! I just got married a couple of years ago and have worked as a restaurant pastry chef for the last five years. My husband had been gaining weight eating all my desserts, so I thought I should find another avenue to share them before he got too heavy!

name your own fortune cookies

Apart from baking what do you enjoy?

I like to cook, sew, travel (we went to London and Paris for our honeymoon), shop (hence my need to sell my baked goods), garden (including herbs, berries, hot peppers, vegetables, sunflowers ,etc.) and of course eating - anything and everything! I especially love “bizarre” foods like stinky tofu, escargot, and have even tried kangaroo once!

rich chocolate chip torte (gluten-free, flourless)

What made you get into baking and then selling your goodies?

Our trip to Paris really inspired me to try making the fine desserts/pastries we saw there including macaroons, operas, croissants, eclairs, tiramisu, etc. These take a while to perfect, that is for sure! I will likely add some of these to my shop over the next year, depending on my customer feedback.

spicy meringue bites (lavender, chocolate, green tea)

movorian sugar cookies (low sugar)

Please describe your creative process.

I love to try out new things and have found that many things that do not necessarily sound all that good can be very tasty and more fun. I get some of my ideas from the gardening that I do, reading and just talking to people about the things that they like. In my Etsy shop you can find just about everything sweet you are looking for--cookies, brownies, tarts, pies, and more. I offer vegan and flourless items as well. If you don't see what you want, let me know and I will do my best to satisfy your sweet tooth! All my ingredients are fresh and no preservatives are used. If you have any special dietary needs let me know that, too. I have a two year culinary degree, several years pastry chef experience and a food safety class certificate.


chocolate ganache brownies with walnuts

Where can people find your baked goods?

For now only on Etsy in my shop, Fancy That Cookies, but this foray into the e-commerce world is really exciting and I am learning a lot of new, interesting things about the Internet that I hope to be able to utilize for a long time to come.

All images by and copyright of Fancy That Cookies, 2009.

DIY Project: Personalized Ikea End Tables

Personalized end tables on the cheap? Yes, please. These LACK tables were originally from Ikea, purchased used on Craigslist, personalized with the floral design and presto, change-o...DIY designer tables!

I'm thinking: save time and effort by using vinyl decals, easily sourced on Etsy.

Steal this idea--DIY instructions found on the Craft Nest blog right HERE.

Design Inspiration: spring florals

IKEA chairs recovered with floral fabrics - here

Floral floor graphics - here

Window blind made of floral fabric - here

Giant floral wall mural - here

Art History: Maxfield Parrish - Part 2

The year of his marriage also brought Parrish his first magazine cover commission withHarper’s Bazaar that began his artistic career, which endured over 50 years and helped define the Golden Age of Illustration and the American visual arts. His talent for illustration and skill with colors caught the eye of many publishers and his work was commissioned for book illustrations, calendars, greeting cards, product advertisements, candy boxes and print. His work appeared in three of the twentieth century’s most-loved, and best known children’s books: Poems of Childhood by Eugene Field (1904), Arabian Nights by Nora Smith and Kate Wiggins (1909), and the most beloved of the Parrish illustrated books, Knave of Hearts by Louise Saunders (1925).

The Knave oil on panel

Between 1904 and 1935, Parrish enjoyed a steady flow of requests for work and was revered as a celebrity when his commissions rose to $2,000 each. An absolute favorite with the American public by 1925; one out of every four households in the United States had a copy of one of his art prints displayed in their home. A survey taken at that time found him listed among the top three favorite artists along with Cezanne and Van Gogh. He was inducted into the Society of American Artists in 1897.


Garden of Allah oil on panel

Technique and Influence
Maxfield Parrish was an innovator in the use of luminous color. The color “Parrish blue”, used frequently in his paintings, was named in his honor. Parrish created a technique of glazing bright layers of oil color separated by varnish and then applied to a base rendering of a blue and white monochromatic under painting. He achieved depth in his paintings by using enlargements of photographs of figures or objects which he projected and then traced at half or full size. The next steps were to cut out and place the images on the canvas and then apply multiple layers of thick glaze. The result creates realistically sized subjects and very vivid colors which appear almost three-dimensional when viewing his original paintings.

Morning oil on panel

Another method invented by Parrish involved making a large piece of cloth patterned with a black-and-white geometric design, draping the cloth on a human, and then photographing the model. With a developed transparency of the photo projected on a white canvas, Parrish used graphite to color in any parts of the project that were to be black. The outcome was a completed painting of a figure wearing a precisely draped cloth with a unique pattern on it. No artist has duplicated the style of Parrish but he influenced many including Norman Rockwelland Andy Warhol.

The Waterfall (1930), Solitude (1930) - both oil on panel

The Landscape Painter
During the 1930s, their children grown and pursuing their own careers, and unhappy about Susan Levin living full-time in the studio with Parrish, Lydia left home to live alone, writing and painting during winters in St. Simon’s Island, Georgia. In 1931, after two winters in Arizona, Parrish decided to abandon his classic, “girls on rocks” theme and focused on painting landscapes. During this period, Parrish studied the hues of nature and applied even more intense colors to his work. A series of Great Southwest paintings include Night in the Desert,Desert with Water, The Grand Canyon, Pueblo Dwellings, Desert without Water (Cowboys), and Water on a Field of Alfalfa. He also produced a series of New England landscapes that were well received by the American public following the Great Depression and in the years leading to World War II. Many of his landscapes were printed on greeting cards, playing cards and in calendars published by Minnesota’s Brown & Bigelow Company from 1937 until 1962. Parrish also designed and painted a number of murals, on the walls of his own home and as decoration within famous hotels and bars across the country.


Evening Shadows, New Hampshire Hills oil on panel

The Last Painting
In 1961, Parrish finished his last painting, Getting Away from It All. The small oil on board shows a lone house on a high mountain peak surrounded by winter snow lit with the light of dawn. A small light burns in the window, and a fantastic light rises beyond the hill as if a beacon inviting the viewer to move from the safety of the home and go on to a higher realm. Parrish painted until he was 90 years old and died in 1966 at the age of 95. Each new generation rediscovers the magic and romance of Maxfield Parrish’s artwork and he remains the most reproduced artist in the history of art.

Getting away from It All (1960) oil on panel

Part 2 of a 2 part post--please click here to read part one from last week! To view a respresentative collection of works by Maxfield Parrish visit HERE.

Copyright Tina Pfeiffer 2009 - do not use the text in this post without my written permission.

Etsy: New in shop 4.22.09

It's a new series of images in my Etsy shop--just posted tonight! The Monticello Antique Mall is hands-down one of my favorite places to visit here in Portland. These new photos, like all of our items, are available as prints (variety of sizes) *OR* blank note cards.

Prefer a larger size? Need it framed? Shipped as a gift? Want it mailed to someone outside the states? Just ask!

These feminine images look glorious in the black mats we include with our prints, and they would be fantastic as a set of cards. You know...to keep in touch with your girlfriends, mail to your mom {Mother's Day is May 10th} or just keep 'em for yourself to enjoy!


layers of time


ladies room


creamy antiques

garden maiden

oregon reports

All images copyright Pfeiffer Photos 2009 - all rights reserved.

Shop: Henry Road

Paula Smail spent her childhood in a house on Henry Road in South Africa. Since then, she has traveled extensively and includes London, Paris and New York in the long list of places she has lived.  

Currently based in Los Angeles, her design aesthetic of bold color is influenced by Marimekko blinds in the house on Henry Road, women wrapped in swathes of stunning African cloth and the work of artists like Rothko and many of his contemporaries.  A self-taught designer, her professional life includes au pairing, crewing on a yacht, and being a corporate executive. Paula’s style is a happy, eclectic mix of color, eras and ethnicities fueled by a life spent rearranging furniture, scouring flea markets all over the world and reading piles of design magazines.

The Henry Road collection includes textile based home and personal goods designed by Paula and made in Los Angeles, California USA.

Henry Road
3949 Laurelgrove Ave, Studio City, CA 91604 
p: 818.762.8966 | f: 818.762.7278

Photos copyright Henry Road, 2009.

DIY Project: Recycled Circle Frames

Circularize your photos and show them off in a urban-chic constellation of modular cardboard rings.  Snappy-lookin’, expandable, and keeps your paper towel rolls out of the landfill. What’s not to like?

To make your own find step-by-step instructions HERE.

Neat Things: Pottery Barn Clearance

bowl with dominoes $60


glass frames $15-$25

colored glass finial vases $20

pressick lanterns $15-$25

FOUND HERE.

Etsy PDX: Daogreer Earth Works

Tell me a bit about yourself name, location, affiliations, personal stuff.
My business name is Daogreer Earth Works - Works of art made exclusively on this planet. Yep, that's right. I don't make 'em anywhere else. Buy domestic. Shop on Earth. I guess you can include Earth among my affiliations. My specific location on Earth is latitude 45.523875, longitude -122.670399 - or Portland, Oregon. I love Portland. By many standards, it is the "greenest" city in the U.S. (go ahead, google "greenest city in US"). Having lived several other places, I'm pretty sure Portland is the place I will always come back to. Besides its greenitude, I love that it's big enough to have all of the amenities of a big city, but small enough to know people you pass on the street. In a couple of hours, I can be at the coast, in the mountains, in the desert, rafting down a river, exploring a cave, climbing a volcano or playing in the snow.


all the lonely purple - screenprint ACEO $5

Apart from creating art, what do you do?
I spend much of my time in the temperate rain forests in the area, teaching middle school students about their natural world, right there where the natural world exists. They learn how all things are connected, develop a sense of community and a sense of place, and get some authentic science practice in, to boot. Part of what makes Portland a green city might be that every 6th grader in Portland has been participating in this program for 40+ years. Otherwise, "creating art" seems to encapsulate nearly everything else that I do.


strung out - fine art photograph, 8x10 $25

What first made you want to become an artist?
I never wanted to "become an artist," nor would I describe myself as an artist first when introducing myself to people. All of my siblings and I have a pretty finely honed aesthetic sense, and we all apply it in different ways. My brother, Colin, is whom I always think of when I think "artist." He is a professional illustrator and has always wanted to be an artist. Check out his stuff here. Almost everything on that site was commissioned for something specific, like the cover of SF Weekly. So, my friends always tell me how artistic/creative I am, but in my head I'll never consider myself the "artist" in the family.


secrets from the past - hollow book $18

Please describe your creative process how, when, materials, etc.
My art is completely random - I'm like a gnat in my creative process. I'll do something for a while and then I'll get distracted by the next shiny object and suddenly I'm into a new type of art. My materials include nearly anything that catches my interest. One type of art I consistently come back to is photography. I really like macro photography and unusual angles of familiar objects.


emperor's raw - fine art photograph, 4x6 $3

What artists have influenced you and inspire you to create?
I don't know if I would consider these my influences, but some artist whose stuff I like include Leonardo DaVinci, Bev Doolittle, Andy Goldsworthy, Jan Vermeer, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Frédéric Bartholdi, and many more.


sparkle id wallets (solo in apple) $5 each

Where else can people find your work?
Daogreerearthworks on Etsy,at 1000 markets, artcardswanted.com, my Facebook page, and I'm on Twitter.


tiny ceramic bowls - set of 3 $36

This is my first post in the ETSY PDX series to featuring Etsy artists and crafters local to my area--Portland, Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest.

All images are by and copyright of Daogreer Earth Works 2009.